Hi Tally sue,

That is just amazing how you have used every nook & cranny of space! Gives me inspiration to *redo* our closet.

Thanks for sharing...great job! :-)

On that first montage, you can see that all the shelves are way too far apart. I fantasize sometimes out ripping out the existing shelves (leftover from probably 2 owners ago or more), and installing those shelf standards w/ the slots every 1/2 inch.

But I never get around to it.

TS, you are just amazing! That space is densely packed. What a huge undertaking.

Tina

Thanks! It is a lot of stuff, but it's also the main storage place in our home.

I had crowed about my project at work. So I sent the link to this thread to some of my coworkers. One of them said, "I thought, 'what does she mean, it took 2 long days to deal with ONE closet?' Then I saw the CLOSET, and I realized how big it is, Now I understand."

(and of course, I tackled a part of the bedroom as well)

Now I just have to make the kids help me keep up w/ maintaining that organization.

Last night, DD was on the phone w/ her friend. Suddenly I heard her say, "You should see my closet! My mom went in a really cleaned it out! It looks really great. Everything's neat, and there's room on the shelves."

I felt great!

It's been nearly a month, and it's maintaining! I'm so tickled.

I did drag DD back in one day to point out the empty plastic shopping bag she'd just let drift to the floor, and I explained how this was how it started getting bad. Since then, nothing's been on the floor.

I'm sure you have made a lasting impression on your DD. You do amazing things to optimize your space and you are an inspiration.

As a child I remember my mother always *"cleaned and froze" her garbage as we used to say when we teased her. Of course, now I "clean and freeze" my garbage and completely understand why.

*She froze food scraps and rinsed out food containers until garbage day so the garbage would smell or attract pests.

DD and I just counted--she has 32 feet of shelf space in this closet (roughly), but this doesn't include the dresser area or the very small space she has for hanging up clothe s(most of it doesn't hang; it goes in the dresser).

32 feet--I don't think she's short on space.

That's not the only place she has stuff; unfortunately she uses a big chunk of the 2 bookshelves in the bedroom, which really should be left to her brother. HE is the one short on storage space.

FOr the longest time ths didn't matter, bcs they played w/ the same stuff, but their interests are diverging.

The next thing is to figure out how to get her stuff off those shelves so he can have them all to himself.

T_sue: A question: Are you using under-bed storage, too? For a long time I had those huge flat plastic bins, all sorted and labelled, under our bed. It's not my favorite thing, but it helps. DH always wanted to make or buy those wooden platform beds with the pull-out drawers. Of course, we could have put overhead compartments in, too, like a plane or train!

Aren't you getting ready to sell your place? Going bigger--or smaller?

We have several big bins under the bed, and the scooters are under there.

But I find that it's not great to have tons of stuff there, bcs what is there, doesn't get tapped for playing.

So we put the bulky stuff (Hot Wheels) and the "mom-related" stuff (sheets & spare mattress pads) under there

And my DS uses the rest of the space for his clubhouse, LOL!

The type of place we have our eye on (GOTTA have 2 bathrooms) would be 3BR, but it would only add about 100 sq. ft (the extra bedroom, 10x10).

The second bedroom now , which they share, is 10x14.

She also thinks it's funny that someone thinks she doesn't have enough room for her stuff.

We did try to sell our place a while ago, and couldn't get a buyer, so we quit for awhile. We couldn't drop our price TOO much, bcs we need to be able to afford the bigger place, and can't have a gap of more than about $120k (even that is going to be a bit hard).

DH & I just talked about the spiffing up that's necessary, and we are going to try again. I'd like to get DD in her own room once she's in high school. At the moment, she & DS are pretty content (I asked her).

LOL on the overhead compartments like a train or airplane--except that, I had made the kids these really long cloth slings to hang on the walls above their beds (DS's was actually suspended from the top bunk) to hold their stuffed animals, so it really was a bit like an overhead bin on an airplane.

I made them take the slings down when our apartment went on the market (that room IS pretty full, and I didn't want it to look unnecessarily crowded, and I didn't succeed--the one piece of feedback we got was that our place seemed crowded). I haven't had the energy to put them back up yet.

Well, if you can eventually get a third BR, even 10 x 10, it will make all the difference. Have you ever watched those HGTV shows where they house-hunt around the world? Very interesting. DH used to have a traveling job and he's always telling me, space hog that I am, how little space Europeans are accustomed to. But it's shocking to see what they call a bedroom there; I would be surprised if those secondary BRs measure over 8 x 10. And that extra 20 sq. ft. going from 10' squared down to 8 x 10 is a very critical 20 sq. ft. to me. But for kids, that would be fine too. All it takes is 4 walls and space to scoot by the bed. (You know, I think with your son being the younger one, that makes it MUCH easier for your daughter to bunk with him. Much.)

I hear you about emptying it out. When my neice was trying to sell their very small house, they actually had to rent a storage space and a U-haul truck to lug most of their stuff out of the house. So it would look spacious. And, do you ever look at those professional closet designs or the closet makeovers? How spacious it all looks! Yes, and if I would pare down to only 5 suits and blouses, mine would look spacious too.

I have a closet much like you described. What we did was put the rod at the back like in a normal closet, but rather high but within reaching distance for both of us. Then we put another one lower. The top rack is his, the bottom one mine. Our slacks are folded over a hanger. All my dresses(admittedly they are few and not something I use every day) and longer stuff went into another closet. Above the racks is a shelf that holds my extra purses and things.

We have a bifold door and on the side where the door opens to we built shelves--cubicles really. They are 1 1/2 feet long and 1 foot deep and 1 1/2 feet tall. This still allows access to the rods. All our jeans and sweaters are folded and put in the cubicles. Next to the cubicles is a small shoe rack--though most of our shoes are in a covered shoe rack in the bedroom. On the other side is a row of hooks for bathrobes and a tie and belt rack that hangs there. Lighting is a touch fixture that is on this wall too.

The shoe rack that I had made sits on a short wall next to the closet in our bedroom. It is mainly a wide book case about 26 inches tall and is covered with a cover I made for it. It looks like a small table.